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The Trek Nation - Child's Play

Child's Play

By Edward James HinesPosted at March 11, 2000 - 6:00 AM GMT

"Child's Play" **

Teleplay by Raf Green

Story by Paul Brown

Directed by Mike Vejar

Janeway's efforts to locate the various parents of the former
Borg
children result in one bite: Icheb's (Manu Intiraymi) Brunali
parents
contact Voyager and are eager to be reunited with their son.
Seven of
Nine, who has grown attached to Icheb, objects for various reasons
— not
the least of which is that the Brunali planet's proximity to a
Borg
transwarp conduit and vulnerability to repeated Borg attacks could
jeopardize
Icheb's safety. Leucon (Mark A. Sheppard), Icheb's father,
explains
that the Borg are attracted to the archaic Brunali for their
sophisticated
techniques in agricultural genetics. He says that Icheb was assimilated
after
having run off to see a new fertilization array in the lower field.
Mezoti
(Marley McCLean), however, tells Seven that Icheb was assimilated as the
only
passenger on a transport vessel. Seven investigates the logs from the
children's Borg cube and also discovers a discrepancy between the
actual
times of Borg attacks on the planet and Leucon's story of when
Icheb was
assimilated. While confronting the parents with this new information,
the
Voyager crew learns that Icheb has again been placed aboard a
transport
vessel aimed directly at the transwarp conduit. The parents genetically
engineered Icheb from birth to serve as a weapon against the Borg.
Icheb's
last cube was infected with a pathogen that he carried and spread
throughout the
ship, killing all the adult drones and disabling the vessel. Janeway
rescues
Icheb from a Borg sphere that emerges from the transwarp conduit and
Voyager narrowly escapes.

This is a complicated morality tale about destiny, parents'
rights and
what some may see as child abuse. The overriding question is, of course,
does
Janeway have the right to interfere with the plans of Icheb's
parents? The
obvious answer should be "no" if she is adhering to the same
Prime
Directive that cautions, "No interference with the normal social
development." Janeway may feel that using Icheb as a weapon is
barbaric and
"abnormal" by her standards, but it is not within her purview
to act
on such judgment based on human values. Icheb is his
parents' son
and they may do with him as they please. They are Brunali, not human.
They are
autonomous and subject to the approval of no one. If they engineered
Icheb to be
a weapon — if that was their intention from the very beginning
—
then that is their choice and Janeway has no say in the matter.
After
all, she went out of her way to find the parents and return Icheb. What
right
does she have to suddenly change her mind simply because their plans for
their
son don't jibe with "normal" human values? By
interfering and
rescuing Icheb from the Borg, Janeway has most likely condemned the
Brunali to
eventual assimilation. By removing the Brunali's inherent right to
choose
their own destiny, Janeway is, in a way, no better than the Borg.

Janeway's seemingly arbitrary decision is similar to many calls
that
James Kirk had to make in TOS. Episodes like "The Return of the
Archons," "A Taste of Armageddon" and "The
Apple" saw
Kirk destroying computers that controlled the populations of certain
planets.
But by what right did he swoop in and decide that this was not
"normal
social development"? There were differences in each of these cases:
Kirk's ship and crew were in danger of destruction. By interfering
in
these societies, he was saving the lives of his crew. Of course, one
could argue
that saving his own people at the expense of an alien's
civilization's way of life is not justification enough, but in
comparison
to Janeway's situation, it's better than having no excuse at
all.
For the sake of a continuing television series, Kirk had to save
his own.
Those kooky computers gave him the excuse he needed to take control.
What was
Janeway's excuse? Compassion … based on human
values.
There she goes again, thinking with her heart and not her head. This is
not to
say that compassion is an undesirable quality in a starship captain, but
there
are times when it is irrelevant. It is virtually certain that no one at
Starfleet Command is going to laud Janeway for condemning a species to
possible
assimilation just so she could save the life of one child.

It's interesting seeing Seven in a maternal role. In
"Ashes to
Ashes," she seemed more disciplinarian; but here — especially
with
Icheb — we understand that she cares for the children very much.
While she
has softened and allowed their individuality to poke through — as
evidenced by Mezoti's ant colony project (which earns a smile from
Chakotay) — she is unwilling to let Icheb make important life
decisions
for himself. The stubborn Janeway, in the ultimate instance of the
"pot
calling the kettle black," implores Seven to let go, but Seven is
determined to hang on for more personal reasons. Whereas in "Dark
Frontier" she was reluctant to indulge in any information regarding
her
parents, here at last she is able to understand her anger toward them.
She feels
they were irresponsible in dragging her along as a child on their
foolhardy
mission to study the Borg. Regarding Icheb, she uses every excuse in the
book to
prevent his returning to his parents: What about his studies? What about
his
medical needs? What about his need to regenerate every day? Her
overriding
concern is, of course, for his safety, and she feels that if she
doesn't
do everything in her power to protect him from danger, then she is no
better
than her parents were. This was a terrific character point to nail down
and
exploit.

Manu Intiraymi does an exceptional job performing as Icheb,
especially as the
character allows himself to warm up to his parents. The best scene
involves the
three of them stargazing. As Icheb relates the story of
Voyager's
quest to get home and the various hardships that have befallen the crew,
he
seems to appreciate having a home of his own and also esteems the
difficulties
that his own people have endured.

The Brunali seem to be a race of wild incongruities. While they are
agrarian
and have limited technological resources, they also possess working
spacecraft
that can simulate false warp signatures. They live in hovels yet are
able to
pursue sophisticated experiments in agricultural and humanoid genetics.
They
don't have particle weapons but their huts have two-way visual
communications. Much of these conflicting extremes can, however, be
chalked up
to the Brunali having to hide evidence of their technological
advancement from
the Borg.

But surely the Borg know that the Brunali are the source of the
deadly
pathogen. Surely it's not merely warp signatures that attract Borg
vessels
to the Brunali planet. Undoubtedly, it's the pathogen that keeps
the Borg
coming back, albeit with a relentlessness that's vastly subdued
compared
to their one-time pursuit of Species 8472.

The Borg's behavior is infinitely curious regarding the
Brunali. In
TNG's "Q Who," Guinan said that when the Borg decide to
come,
they do so in force. "They don't do anything piecemeal."
In
"Dark Frontier," the Borg queen told Seven that if even
one
ship of an assimilated species were to escape, then that species
continues to
resist the Borg. This is not an ideal situation because resistance is
supposed
to be futile. So why haven't the Borg assimilated everyone on the
Brunali
planet? How is it that pockets of the population have escaped detection?
Could
it be that the aftermath of the near-debacle involving Species 8472 has
made the
Borg more cautious? They are undoubtedly afraid of this pathogen, which
apparently they cannot assimilate.

What's also curious about the pathogen is that the Doctor
didn't
detect it during his earliest medical scans of Icheb. When he was
assimilated,
Icheb spread the disease throughout his ship but was incubated from its
effects
in a maturation chamber. The Doctor, who studied the effects on the Borg
cube,
surely should have noticed similar readings coming from Icheb when he
was
brought aboard Voyager.

It is untrue that Seven never again saw her parents after they were
assimilated. She saw her father as a drone in "Dark
Frontier."

The Brunali settlement is located in a huge crater not unlike the one
left at
the New Providence colony in TNG's "The Best of Both
Worlds."

The "1st Annual Voyager Science Fair" bears a passing
resemblance
to TNG's "Captain Picard Day" from "The
Pegasus."
During Icheb's explanation of how he thought to scan for neutrino
fluctuations with his high-resolution gravimetric sensor array, he
mentions
having studied Starfleet records about the Bajoran Wormhole.

Finally, it is often said that children improve on the abilities of
their
parents. Seven is duly impressed by Icheb's ability to further
increase
the resolution of Voyager's long-range scanners. Evidently,
this is
a task she either had not thought to do or was unable to do herself.